rebuild

18 Articles

What Will It Take To Restore A Serious Flight Simulator?

July 13, 2025 by 1 Comment

[Jared] managed to find a professional FAA-certified flight simulator at an auction (a disassembled, partial one anyway) and wondered, what would it take to rebuild it into the coolest flight sim rig ever?

In a video, [Jared] gives a tour of the system and highlights the potential as well as pointing out challenges and drawbacks. Fortunately the system is of a modular design overall, and the motion control system is documented. The chassis and physical parts are great, but the avionics stack is a mixed bag with some missing parts and evidence of previous tinkering — that part being not quite so well documented.

Conceptually, a mid-tier gaming rig with a wraparound display will take care of the flight software part, and some custom electronics work (and probably a Raspberry Pi or three) will do for interfacing to various hardware elements. But a lot of details will need to be worked out in order to turn the pile of components into an entertaining flight sim rig, so [Jared] invites anyone who is interested to join him in collaborating on innovative approaches to the myriad little challenges this build presents.

We’ve seen the community pull off some clever things when it comes to flight sims, so we know the expertise is out there.

Continue reading “What Will It Take To Restore A Serious Flight Simulator?” →

A warehouse with concrete floors and at least four subway car rails running off into the distance. On the rails are dozens of R142 series subway cars with refurbished trucks in the foreground. People are visible on the floor moving a truck, and one man is in a bright yellow crane above everything watching what happens.

Overhauling Subway Cars Is A Big Job

July 30, 2024 by 6 Comments

Subway cars have a tough life. Moving people through a city efficiently underground every day and night takes a toll on the hardware. To keep things running efficiently, NYC rebuilds its cars every six years.

The enormous job of refurbing a subway car back to factory spec happens in one of two yards, either in Brooklyn or Manhattan. The cars are pulled off their 16,000 lb trucks, and treated to an overhaul of their “doors, windows, signage, seats, floor tiles and HVAC.” The trucks are inspected and wheels can be reground to true at the six year mark; they get all new wheels every 12.

Once everything is repaired, the shiny and like-new components are inspected and reassembled to go back out on the line. While it’s no small job, the overhaul shops can process over 1,000 cars in a year to keep things running smoothly. Before the overhaul program was introduced in the 1980s, NYC subway cars typically experienced failures every 16,000 miles, but between the scheduled maintenance and other advances that number has soared to an average failure rate every 140,000 miles.

For a somewhat less official use of underground spaces, how about this Parisian secret society? If you really want to bring the subway home, how about making an old subway seat into a chair? If you need something more light-hearted, you should really checkout this 90s subway safety video from LA.

Continue reading “Overhauling Subway Cars Is A Big Job” →

The Cheap CNC3018 Gets A Proper Revamp

June 8, 2024 by 25 Comments

Many people have been attracted to the low price and big dreams of the CNC3018 desktop CNC router. If you’re quick, you can pick one up on the usual second-hand sales sites with little wear and tear for a steal. They’re not perfect machines by any stretch of the imagination, but they can be improved upon, and undoubtedly useful so long as you keep your expectations realistic.

[ForOurGood] has set about such an improvement process and documented their journey in a whopping eight-part (so far!) video series. The video linked below is the most recent in the series and is dedicated to creating a brushless spindle motor on a budget.

As you would expect from such a machine, you get exactly what you pay for.  The low cost translates to thinner than ideal metal plates, aluminium where steel would be better, lower-duty linear rails, and wimpy lead screws. The spindle also suffers from cost-cutting, as does the size of the stepper motors. But for the price, all is forgiven. The fact that they can even turn a profit on these machines shows the manufacturing prowess of the Chinese factories.

We covered the CNC 3018 a while back, and the comments of that post are a true gold mine for those wanting to try desktop CNC. Warning, though: It’s a fair bit harder to master than 3D printing!

Continue reading “The Cheap CNC3018 Gets A Proper Revamp” →

Nearly-Destroyed Commodore Gets New Life

April 26, 2024 by 10 Comments

We all have our shiny, modern computers for interacting with the modern world, but at times they can seem a little monochromatic. Even the differences between something like macOS and Windows for the average user often boil down to which operating system loads an Internet browser. There are obviously more differences than that, but back in the 80s it was much more extreme with interoperability a pipe dream in most cases. What keeps drawing people to maintaining and using computers from that chaotic era is more tangible compared to modern machines, and that is meant quite literally; computers from this era can be saved from an extreme amount of degradation like this Commodore that was nearly completely destroyed before it was re-discovered.

The first step was to restore the case of this Commodore PC20-III, but the restoration of the computer’s internals took a bit more time. First, the entire board was de-soldered, with any rare chips being set aside for future use. Unfortunately the board itself was too corroded and otherwise damaged to be used, but since these were just two-layer boards it could be photographed and then re-created in CAD software to make a near-perfect duplicate of the original. The team at [The Cave] took the opportunity to add patch wires which would have been present in the original machine into the PCB, and made some other upgrades as well like adding sockets to various chips that would have been originally soldered to the board.

The passive components, especially capacitors, were brand new as well and some period-correct components such as a monitor and keyboard finish out the build. The computer boots on the first try, and is quickly put through its paces testing the hard disk drive, using the old floppy drive, and even playing a few video games from the era. The fact that retrocomputers like these are easy (by modern standards) to reverse engineer and restore surely leads to their continued popularity, and we’ve seen everything from C64s to this 128DCR get a similar full restoration.

Continue reading “Nearly-Destroyed Commodore Gets New Life” →

The controller after the rebuild, looking just like the stock controller but with an external antenna attached

An Extensive Walkthrough On Building Your Own KSP Controller

January 3, 2024 by 10 Comments

Having a game-tailored controller is a level-up in more ways than one, letting you perform in-game actions quickly and intuitively, instead of trying to map your actions to a clunky combination of keyboard and mouse movements. [abzman] took the Pelco KBD300A, a DVR-intended camera controller panel with a joystick, reverse-engineered it, and then rebuilt it into a Kerbal Space Program controller. What’s more, he documented every detail along the way!

The write-up is so extensive, it’s four separate posts — all of them worth reading without a doubt. In the first post, he describes the original hardware, the process of reverse-engineering it, and a few tips for your own RE journeys. Next, he covers about making his own board, showing all the small decisions he’s had to make, with plenty of KiCad screenshots. If you are on the lookout for designing such a board, there’s plenty to learn!

The original hardware didn’t go down without a fight — the third post talks about taming the seven-segment displays, the onboard joystick, and fighting with the key matrix wired in exactly the way you wouldn’t want. In the end, he shows us how you could tie a controller easily into Kerbal Space Program.

One more piece of hardware liberated, one more win for the hacker world. Whether it’s a Macintosh SE, a classic ThinkPad, or even a generic rotary tool, these upgrades are always a joy to see. If you wanted to learn to do such an upgrade yourself, here’s us showing how you can pull this off with a classic Sony Vaio!

Don’t Miss Your Last Chance To Enter The Hack It Back Challenge

July 21, 2022 by 3 Comments

While the 2022 Hackaday Prize as a whole winds its way through a good chunk of the year, each individual challenge that makes up the competition only sticks around for a limited time. As hard as it might be to believe, our time with theHack it Back challenge is nearly at a close, with just a few days left to enter your project before the July 24th deadline.

Each challenge in this year’s Hackaday Prize has been designed around the core themes of sustainability, resiliency, and circularity — and for the Hack it Back phase of the competition we asked hackers to essentially keep as much hardware out of the landfill as possible. That could mean making a simple fix that puts a piece of equipment back into service, or it might be a be complete rebuild of an older device to bring it up to modern standards. These are the kind of projects Hackaday was built on, so turning it into an official challenge this year made perfect sense. Continue reading “Don’t Miss Your Last Chance To Enter The Hack It Back Challenge” →

Recycled Speed Boat Beats The Barnacles Out Of Your Average Rebuild

June 3, 2022 by 33 Comments

There’s an old saying that says “Anything is possible with enough Time, Money, or Brains. Pick two.” For [Mr HỒ Thánh Chế], the choice was obvious: Time, and Brains. This is evident by the impressive DIY boat build shown in the video below the break.

[Mr HỒ] starts with an Isuzu marine diesel engine that was apparently found on the beach, covered in barnacles and keel worms (and who knows what else). A complete teardown reveals that the crankcase was miraculously spared the ravages of the sea, and somehow even the turbo survived. After a good cleaning and reassembly, the engine rumbles to life. What’s notable is that the entire engine project was done with only basic tools, save for a lathe. Even generally disposable parts such as the head gasket are re-used.

Moving onto the hull, half of an old damaged boat is used and a new top is built. Car seats out of a Toyota sit behind a steering column also from a car, while the deck is built from scratch out of square tubing, foam board, and fiberglass.

What we liked about the project isn’t so much the end result, it has some build quality issues and it looks like the steering is far too slow, but what project of our own hasn’t been knocked together for fun with some obvious flaws? In fact, that’s very often the epitome of the Hacker spirit- doing it quick, dirty, having fun, and iterating as we go. For that, our hat is off to [Mr HỒ].

If boat recycling puts the wind in your sails, check out this boat-turned-sauna project.

Continue reading “Recycled Speed Boat Beats The Barnacles Out Of Your Average Rebuild” →